home network planning with all-linux questions

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sat, Nov 17, 2007 at 18:30:05 +1030,
  Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> 
> There's plenty of advantages in using a router (small, reliable, quick
> to get going, easy to connect more than two devices to the one box,
> etc.).  But I can see one common disadvantage - they're less
> programmable than using a computer.  If you want special rules, you
> might be out of luck.  If you want to create port-forwarding rules,
> you've got limited options, and you may be only able to specify a few
> ports to forward.  Mine lets me specify only 8, which isn't really
> enough if you have to forward a few ports to one PC for some particular
> protocol, then want to do the same for some other PCs.  Mine doesn't
> even let me set UDP or TCP rules, it's just port numbers.

You can buy a Buffalo 5 port wireless router for about $45 shipped and
run linux on it using DDWRT. Currently these are restricted to a 2.4
kernel, but you can still have plenty of betworking fun. OpenWRT will
probably be supporting the G125s soon and 2.6 kernels probably in around
6 months (based on B43 probably being well supported in 2.6.25 and some
lag before the OpenWRT project uses it) which will provide even more
flexibility.